All Your Stonehenge Photos Are Belong To England

An anonymous reader writes "English Heritage, the organization that runs and manages various historical sites in the UK, such as Stonehenge, has apparently sent letters to various photo sharing and stock photo sites claiming that any photo of Stonehenge that is being sold violates its rights, and only English Heritage can get commercial benefit from such photos. In fact, they're asking for all money made from such photos, stating: 'all commercial interest to sell images must be directed to English Heritage.' As one recipient noted, this seems odd, given that English Heritage has only managed Stonehenge 'for 27 of the monument's 4,500 year old history.'"

Comments

Simple:

[Fluffeh]

Step One: Study RIAA methods and business practice.
Step Two: Find some old stuff alying around that people seem to like.
Step Three: Claim "Ownership" of aforementioned stuff.
Step Four: PROFIT!!!

Re:Simple:

[c0lo]

Step Three: Claim "Ownership" of aforementioned stuff.

While for RIAA has clear the legal bases of their claims (copyright law, in various incarnations), it is not quite clear to me on what legal basis English Heritage can claim ownership of the photos one takes. IANAL, but to my mind they can't claim copyright:

• on the photo, because the photo (which is the form of expression of "artistic creation") is not theirs, is the photographer's
• on the Stonehenge itself - because:
  1. it is ... shall I say?... a building, not at "form of expression"
  2. even if a building would be a "form of expression", it is not theirs (being listed as world heritage)
  3. even if it would be theirs and classified as a "form of artistical expression", the creation act trancedes any current temporal limit for "protection under the copyright law" (that is, unless in UK the copyright protection was extended beyond 5000 years!)

  Head explodes!

Re:Simple:

[DavidTC]

They can assert their rights as a condition of entry to the property. This does happen also on entry to various museums which may explicitly forbid all photography or just commercial photography. If you photograph Stonehenge from somewhere else (especially from public land), then there can be no objection or claim to copyright.

This is what is, frankly, nonsense.

There are only two reasons to forbid photography in a museum:

One is banning flash photography to stop damage to paintings. This is clearly a stupid rational for something outside, and I would assume almost all photographs of Stonehenge are taken without a flash anyway.

Two is if there are things still copyright. Which is an even stupider reason for this.

I went to the Museum of Modern Art , and could take non-flash photography of all works except, strangely, a single one, because it was on loan and still under copyright. (It was some sort of shark in a case.)

This group might have some legal basis for restricting photography, you can indeed stop people from taking pictures on your 'property', but at that point Stonehenge needs to be taken away from their management and given to someone else. They don't actually 'own' Stonehenge, they're just running the property on behave of the British government, and if they're going to act like this, they should be removed from that.

This is, incidentally, different than restricting someone from using it as a trademark, which the British government could do if they wanted.

Dear English Heritage,

[MarioMax]

Dear English Heritage,

Go fuck yourselves.

Signed,

Everyone else

Re:Dear English Heritage,

[Dynedain]

Exactly. My photos of Stonehenge are mine. I shot them, and my admission ticket had nothing on it restricting the terms of my photographing it.

These are my fucking property. I created them, I own the copyright, not this organization, and I'll sell them if I please.

Now, if they want to try to trademark Stonehenge, go right ahead, but I don't see it holding up.

Of course

[VincenzoRomano]

All photos of the Colosseo, St. Peter's dome, Ponte Vecchio and Ponte di Rialto belong to ... Berlusconi.

Ruining photography

[proxima]

This sort of crap has the potential to make photographer's lives really annoying. And this comes just as more and more people are active amateur photographers.

The lighting on the Eiffel Tower is copyrighted? Museums claim rights over photographic reproductions of century-old paintings? Where do we draw the line?

On the one hand, we have the physical equivalent of contracts: agreements made as a requirement for entrance; this allows zoos, museums, etc. to restrict the use of commercial photography. But photos taken from public streets? From the air?

The fact that these institutions go after commercial users isn't much comfort; the line between non-commercial amateur and commercial-but-still-amateur photography. Have ads up on a blog? Submit your photo to a local art show? Sell your photo to a stock photo site? It's easy for an amateur to make a little cash from the best of their photos.

Re:Ruining photography

[Anonymous Coward]

As a theatrical lighting designer, I dislike people like you. I don't want to copy your design for your last play. Firstly, it doesn't match the play I'm working on (even if it's the same script). If i did use it, it would look like crap and I wouldn't be hired again. Are you afraid of me copying a specific thing you did with a light? Guess what, borrowing little bits from others is how you grow in the arts. It's not just about each little idea, it's also about how you combine them. Think collage. And if you create the iconic version that runs on broadway and that every director asks to be repeated, well fucking awesome. Also, no other lighting designer is ever going to have the same equipment or space again, so even if they do recreate your look, it's less like copying and more like making a crayon version of the Mona Lisa. An homage. So please, get over yourself. This isn't like downloading music, where instead of coming to see your play they're looking at pictures they pirated or they went out and created a perfect working replica. At worst, someone several years down the line will make they're lights look kinda like what they're (crappy) camera remembers them like, only with different equipment in a different space. And people will say "those lights don't work for this production" and they will be out of work. Also, you don't mention copywriting your programming. Which you can. Also you're instructions to the board op and SM. Which, again, are useless unless everything is a perfect match. Which it won't be. Sorry for being so ranty. But worrying about someone copying one of my lighting designs is like worrying about someone copying the way an actor acts. Yes, with enough work someone could do it...but only sorta, and it would v&e meaningless to someone watching, and anyone in the biz making hiring decisions is gonna call them out on it...

Re:Ruining photography

[CrashandDie]

Well, it's already a big mess.

In France for example, you can take the picture of someone on the street, but you're not allowed to publish it. You need to have a signed waiver from the person, or the legal guardian. Even furniture and houses benefit from this.

What it basically means, is that I can't use the picture of a specific house to try and sell the house I'm currently building. It also means that I could get in trouble for putting a picture of myself on Flickr if there happens to be an identifiable stranger in the background. I also can't publish a picture of a (for the sake of example) chest-drawer in the middle of a public street, or sell it, or show it during an art expo and gain material benefits from it, unless the owner of the chest drawer signed a waiver.

However, I can take a picture of a bunch of people who are demonstrating (quite common for the past weeks in France), provided that I'm photographing "a group of people demonstrating", not "a person". Though, when you think about the 18+ megapixel cameras any sufficiently committed amateur photographer can get their hands on, I wonder where the line is drawn. Can I crop?

I'm quite an avid photographer; the UK/Australia/US rules on this were an absolute godsend (rough lines: don't breach the "expectation of privacy" and you're good to go). Well, that was in the days before Stonehenge was built.

While we're making unenforcable claims...

[mykos]

"We own the light you collected which was reflected from this object that predates our country by millennia "? I am hoping deep down that they're just kidding and it's just a practical joke on the world. There are so many adjectives applicable to this idiocy, but I am getting sleepy and don't have time to list them.

Wrong jargon for Britain

[Mathinker]

Dear English Heritage,

We refer you to the reply given in the case of Arkell v. Pressdram.

Signed,

Everyone else

Re:Greed vs Common Sense

[xaxa]

Sadly another case of greed over-ruling common sense.

Blame the current government (or the previous government for spending all the money, if you prefer).

All NDPBs (non-departmental public bodies / quangos), as well as government departments, have been told to cut costs and find new ways to make money. The one I work for is trying to sell it's scientific data (yet it's also supposed to go on data.gov.uk and be available to the taxpayers who paid for it).

Anyone sufficiently annoyed with English Heritage should write to their MP. I imagine it will fix the issue very quickly.

Re:Image rights and trademark

[naasking]

The British public pays to maintain these sites, and an awful lot of money at that, so why should some company be allowed to step in and enjoy the benefits of the public's investment?

Because you paid an entrance fee to visit this site, and you're also paying to maintain the site via taxes, so why should you pay even more? Will I now have to pay the government every time I take a picture of a road? I'm sorry, but it's ludicrous.